Brussels 2019

I must begin this post by thanking C for all of the hard work he puts into planning each of our trips! It's rather time consuming and yet he does it happily, which makes for smooth sailing on our adventures.  While sometimes he might narrow hotel choices down to two and ask me which I'd prefer, I generally leave it up to him because I know whatever he plans is going to be amazing! I am so fortunate and I never ever take any of this for granted! The more we travel, the more I appreciate the attention to detail he puts into every one of our trips! He is the best!!!

Wednesday, April 17

When we got to Brussels, we walked from the train station to our hotel, which was a Hilton Garden Inn. Certainly not fancy, but unlike the hotel in Amsterdam, certainly adequate and reasonably priced!

It was the only day of our trip where the weather wasn't pretty much perfect, and we were not only tired from traveling, but also from a less than wonderful experience in Amsterdam, so we had a pretty low key night!

Thursday, April 18

We spent the whole day sightseeing and it took very little time for me to fall in love with Brussels!

We went to the Musical Instruments Museum and it was fabulous! We are former band nerds and we loved seeing all of the fascinating instruments – some of which were several hundreds of years old!

We checked out the library and the shops in the city center area, and as you can see, the buildings are beautiful! While I was prepared for French to be the dominant language, I was surprised by the lack of English speakers we encountered (it seemed like the second most prevalent language spoken is German)! Thankfully my out-of-practice French from many moons ago proved useful yet again!

I also came across posters advertising a Dachshund parade that really made my day – it would have been so fun if we'd been in town to see it take place!

we didn't see a single wiener dog in Brussels,
but we did see a wiener bus

how adorable!

Friday, April 19

You may recall that last year when we visited Barcelona, we rented a car and took a day trip to Andorra. We decided to do something similar on this trip, and rent a car in Brussels to drive to Luxembourg for the day!

We walked to the train station from our hotel and it was just as simple and straightforward to rent the car as it had been in Barcelona. Of course this leaves me pondering the same question: why is it such a headache to rent a car in the U.S.? I just don't understand!

After picking up our car in the garage, we headed out of Brussels and drove southeast to Luxembourg. It was a beautiful day and the scenery was lovely in both countries. As we got close to Luxembourg City, the traffic started to build, which we attributed to spring break travel and it being Good Friday. We had planned to find somewhere to stop for lunch, but that didn't happen because it was really kind of crazy trying to drive in the city. We ended up finding a Starbucks so we could grab something to drink before deciding to just drive on through and enjoy the day. There was so much construction going on, countless one-way roads, and very poorly synchronized traffic lights that all added up to a bit of a headache. Instead of turning around and doubling back on our path, we decided to drive through to Germany and return to Brussels taking the scenic route. I'm so glad we did! Even though we were only in Germany for about an hour, it turned out to be an awesome afternoon!

Unfortunately we got stuck in holiday/Friday afternoon traffic when we got to Brussels, but it would have taken much more than traffic to put a damper on such a nice day!

Saturday, April 20

We spent our last day doing some final sightseeing around the city. We went to the Atomium, which is honestly one of the coolest structures I've ever seen, as well as other gardens and such. We noticed that the city center was more crowded today, which, again, could be due to either it being the weekend, a holiday, or both. Nonetheless, we had a great day roaming about!

Sunday, April 21, 2019

We got up super early, checked out of the hotel, took the metro to the main train station, and took the train from the city to the airport. Even though the public transportation in Brussels is not as extensive as other cities we've been to, we were able to get around the city very easily!

Our flight home was great; as I mentioned in my Amsterdam post, I have really become a fan of Delta and today's flight was no different. The service has been excellent in our experience!

When we landed at JFK, we breezed right through immigration and customs with Global Entry, and we were on the AirTrain to long term parking within 20 minutes. We couldn't believe it! I cannot even estimate the countless hours that having Global Entry has saved us. Forty minutes after landing we were in the car and driving away from the airport, which was definitely a record for us, and furthered my ridiculous belief that we would do very well on any travel portion of The Amazing Race.

For me, Brussels in somewhere in the middle of the pack as far as European cities we've visited go. My top-tier cities are Barcelona, Paris, Reykjavik, Oslo, and Prague; second-tier cities are London, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Brussels; and my least favorite cities so far are Rome, Helsinki, and Amsterdam (I didn't include any day-trip-only cities because I don't think one day allows for a fully-formed opinion!). It will be interesting where cities we visit on future trips end up on my list, because I have been surprised, both positively and negatively, when places did or did not match the expectations I had leading up to the visits!

Finally, a huge thank you to my mom for watching Ginny and indulging my numerous FaceTime calls – even though you can see in this last photo that Ginny herself was over them!

clearly she'd had enough of my calls

Happy Tails to you!